Immersive Content Playroom

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Experience Eight Immersive Projects -- Five of them made here in Manitoba

Explore storytelling using VR games, 360 experiences and social media in the All Access Immersive Content Playroom. Each experience lasts 5 to 15 minutes. A panel featuring a representative from each project takes place on January 10 at 1:45.

The All Access Playroom is open:Tuesday, January 10th – 10:00 am to 5:00 pmWednesday, January 11th – 10:00 am to 4:00 pmFree entrance with full conference and day passesDrop-in: $10 at the door

CUT OFF (IMMERSIVE VR), 2016

Producers: VICE, NFB, CFC, and Occupied VR.

Cut-Off is an immersive 360° VR documentary experience that places the viewer in the middle of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's historic visit to Shoal Lake 40, a First Nation in Canada without access to clean water. Viewers also visit Cross Lake, where a state of emergency was declared after a wave of youth suicides.

Breaking Ice, the Arctic Uncovered (360° PROJECT), 2016

You’ve seen it on the back of the Canadian $50. Now, immerse yourself in the world’s first feature-length documentary and multi-media 360° Virtual Reality tour aboard the iconic Amundsen icebreaker in the High Arctic.

Explore the drastically changing Arctic landscape through the eyes of on-board researchers, scientists, students, and Inuit. Delve deep into their stories, adventures, findings, and encounters to see what climate change really means at the top of the world, how people feel about it, and what can be done.

Weaving a Better Future (360° Project), 2016

Weaving a Better Future" is a virtual reality (VR) experience developed by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) to accompany the exhibition Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives that Transform Communities. Through this 360-degree visual experience, viewers are virtually transported to Guatemala, where they explore the world of artisan women working for empowerment and asserting their rights. The video was created by CMHR staff members, who visited the villages, workplaces and homes of Maya women in weaving communities. These women use cooperative work and traditional weaving to make a living, preserve their culture and heal from human rights violations.

CARDBOARD CRASH (VR REALITY EXPERIMENT), 2015

Creators: Vincent McCurley and the NFB Digital Studio.Produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Cardboard Crash is a virtual reality experiment that questions the ethics of artificial intelligence in self-driving cars.The audience is placed in a self-driving car and forced to make a difficult ethical choice when confronted with an unavoidable crash, where there is plenty of data but no easy answer.

When artificial intelligence makes these decisions for us, should we hold them to an ethical standard? Given varied cultural and individual ethics, who should be designing these algorithms, and how should they be chosen?

FLIPSIDE (VR CREATION PLATFORM), 2016

Flipside empowers actors and producers to create 3D rendered virtual reality and 2D animated shows by bringing the live production studio into virtual reality. This one of a kind VR broadcast studio bridges the gap between flat screen audiences and AR/VR audiences. Generate and stream real-time live animated performances that can be viewed on any conventional 2D platform while inviting VR’s early adopters to jump inside the show. Create your next show in Flipside.

Spire <Fléchette> (VR Experience), 2016

Producer: Khal Shariff, (Project Whitecard, Manitoba in coproduction with several companies in Belgium)

Spire is an episodic time travel VR game that offers the user a deep and high-quality emotional and historical experience. The stop-motion film NFB artistry of Brian Duchsnerer and a world-class creative team will give Spire a unique look and feel that combines the game technology with traditional craftsmanship in the spirit of If I was God (Barker NFB) and Coraline.

Spire will feature emotional stories tied to historical events, as seen through the eyes of its young female protagonist, Muriel, who can travel over decades of time using “The Spire.” Spire is innovative on 3 main levels: 1) game- embedded real life “NFB-style” maquettes and environments 2) “time-jumping” that forms the core gameplay: immediate for game obstacles 3) interaction and dialogue with non-player characters through head gestures. In this development episode, “Spire: Mons” we allow the player to see a World War 1 Trench Flanders experience it as it was 100 years ago.

Star Rangers (VR Experience), 2015

Producer: Khal Shariff, (Project Whitecard, Manitoba)

Star Rangers VR is a virtual-reality adventure game in our solar incorporating NASA content, with an emphasis being able to travel in low gravity from planet to planet, and solve mysteries while building space stations. As a spatially-sensitive game, SRVR is also being tested for efficacy in treating dementia.

What Brings Us Here (Instagram Project), 2016

A National Film Board, Instagram-based project, featuring the hands-on work of volunteers from Drag the Red and Bear Clan Patrol in Winnipeg, Canada. In response to the many missing and murdered people in this city and this nation, people have banded together to patrol neighbourhoods and comb the banks and water of the Red River. We’ve been asking them: what brings you here to do this work?This project is the first time that the NFB is exploring Instagram as a platform for storytelling. The narrative unfolded over two months and 90+ posts, beginning October 2016. The project will continue in the new year.